


Death Takes a Holiday

by flecksofpoppy



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Edward Hopper's nightmares, Light Reincarnation, M/M, Surrealism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-10-31 22:12:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10908474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flecksofpoppy/pseuds/flecksofpoppy
Summary: He starts to look for the man in the suit, shimmering like an apparition on the steps. Never a paper, never a coffee, not waiting for someone.Based on an Edward Hopper painting and the film "Death Takes a Holiday"





	Death Takes a Holiday

**Author's Note:**

> A few days ago, I saw the Edward Hopper painting _Summertime_ :
> 
> It fascinated me, and I pictured Erwin in the place of the woman, standing there in this weird ethereal light that's also a little foreboding. This work was done in 1943, so I just stuck with the era.
> 
> In addition, because of how it fit with my interpretation of the painting, I based this fic off the 1934 film [Death Takes a Holiday](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Takes_a_Holiday) (something I've been wanting to base a fic off for like literally a decade), wherein Death, as in the personification thereof, takes a proverbial vacation. Tidy Wiki summary: "After years of questioning why people fear him, Death takes on human form for three days so that he can mingle among mortals and find an answer." I also experimented here with a slightly different style (as in I tried not to use so many semicolons and rambling sentences), just for shits and giggles.
> 
>  
> 
> **Triggers/Warnings: death, THE VOID, eye contact (sort of), insects (mostly just references to flies)**
> 
>  
> 
> That enough information? Still with me? Okay, here we go.

There’s a man.

That’s the first thing that Levi notices one summer morning. Just a man standing on a stoop, staring out into the early morning light. Golden-haired, blue-eyed, and broad—a film star in a suit or a haloed angel in a painting—alone.

Kuchel goes to church every Sunday, and every Sunday, Levi goes with her. She has three dresses she wears—one blue with a ruffled neckline, one green with a floral pattern, one yellow with a smart collar—each of which Levi launders with great care. His mother’s hands shake too much now for delicate things.

He doesn’t care so much for pretty things himself or smartly cut suits, just clean and respectable. He wants to be respectable.

The sermon is always the same as ladies dab at their foreheads with handkerchiefs, a lazy electric fan buzzing in the corner with ribbons tied to the grates. Levi sits still, not listening as the preacher talks about god. He’s relatively sure Kuchel doesn’t listen either, but she likes to be there.

He doesn’t like church, but he does like to walk with her in the air. 

He starts to look for the man in the suit, shimmering like an apparition on the steps. Never a paper, never a coffee, not waiting for someone. In that strange emptiness of summer in Flatbush, every morning the nameless man stands doing absolutely nothing at nine a.m. He remains in the same position at eleven, a well-dressed monument.

At first, Levi attributes the fine clothing to money. Yet after a few times passing, he starts to see a soldier somewhere in that sun-dappled blankness. Then again, Levi sees soldiers everywhere these days.

Levi grows genuinely curious, and he’s unsure why. He usually doesn’t concern himself with the business of strangers, but somehow, he starts to outright stare as they pass; the man never looks back.

But he tries not to look for too long; the man has something like death in his eyes.

Not mortality, but stillness.

Levi is terrified of stillness.

Two, four, six Sundays pass, and summer is almost over. Levi wonders if the man will keep standing there in the autumn, too. His suit changes every time, but his hair and expression don’t.

Finally, Levi cracks.

He takes Kuchel to and from church, arm extended for her. Soon, she’ll need her coat, and he thinks about how much it will cost.

When they get back to the apartment, she settles herself in a rickety chair in the kitchen, turns on the radio. There’s a sad song playing—some mournful love ballad—and Levi hates it, so he goes on a walk.

He goes back to the man without reason.

Up close, he’s even more strange and surreal, and Levi doesn’t know what to say, if he should say anything. And finally, the man looks at him, though not in the eye.

He nods cordially; he is an ordinary person. 

Levi feels silly for his fascination, and nods back politely. They don’t speak.

But he returns again and again every morning after church, unable to stop himself. Kuchel doesn’t question him; she’s always urging him to get out of the apartment, to breathe in the air and reminds him that he’s alive.

Mostly, he tells himself he leaves because he despises sad songs; but he knows it’s because now that he’s been in the man’s presence, when he’s not close, the world feels odd.

He thinks he’s losing his mind.

The next morning he goes, he brings a newspaper. Does the man read? Is he actually a funerary statue come to life?

It’s confirmed he’s just a man as he takes a seat next to Levi and accepts the paper; another nod, cordial, but he doesn’t drive Levi away.

He reads the front page with intelligent, keen eyes.

Levi takes the funnies and reads those.

They read together every Sunday. Kuchel doesn’t ask where he goes anymore; he starts to think she doesn’t want to know. He can’t blame her. Levi’s never been up to any good, either before or after he came back.

Then, he brings tea with the newspaper, hot tea that tastes like nothing in paper cups from the church. It’s poor quality and he feels embarrassed, but then it’s the first time the man smiles. He nods again, and this time, he looks at Levi a bit longer.

Levi stares down into his cup. He doesn’t understand why he doesn’t want to leave.

Summer continues into autumn. It remains too hot for jackets, and he’s given a bit more time to afford a winter coat for his mother. He works two days a week at a department store sweeping floors. Sometimes, he enters illegal fights. He’s honestly not sure which one he prefers, though he doesn’t like Kuchel’s sad eyes when he comes home with bloodied knuckles.

The man watches him now in return when he passes with Kuchel, eyes burning into his back with an intensity not warranted over shared newspapers and weak tea.

He’s lonely. Levi knows it somehow. Yet he’s not a pitiable figure, unlike so many of the weathered, pale men left in the world that Levi knows.

In the apartment building, there’s always a window open that never seems to be closed in his glowing morning stare, a door that no one ever seems to walk through, shoes that are so well shined, Levi wonders if the man ever walks anywhere.

In some absurd part of his mind, he wonders if the man ever goes anywhere at all.

It’s October on the cusp of actual cold when the man first speaks.

“Levi.”

Levi is sitting next to him on the stoop, staring up into the sky blankly. He finds that now, without the man nearby, he feels empty. 

But Levi never told him his name. He’s never said a word, and in a way, he’s been wondering for a long time now why his presence is allowed. Why his strange way of coexisting is tolerated.

Why he feels like a piece of iron attracted to a powerful magnet. 

“Do we know each other?” His voice sounds out of place on the stoop, ugly in the ethereal glow of the man’s blond halo and perfect presence, unmarred by the outside world of dirty streets and sweaty bodies.

The smile he receives is enigmatic, terrifying, yet strangely kind.

“Once or twice.”

He stands, and the man stands. Their heights are so different that Levi can only stare at his shoulders, but he doesn’t mind. He likes how the shirt is buttoned up to his neck, how the white cotton is perfectly starched and never out of the place. It’s exactly how he prefers his own shirts, how he likes to see the shirts arranged on the mannequins at the department store—perfect and pristine.

But he stares hard with a frown, feeling embarrassed and confused at the strange answer.

“That’s a lunatic’s answer.” He crosses his arms, suddenly feeling defensive, like he knows this man well enough to even be petulant. 

And then he flinches as a large hand rises to hover next to his face, fingers slowly tracing the shape of his jaw without touching, and he shivers.

“Your hair is always dark,” the man says, hand drifting up higher, still not touching. “Your eyes are always gray.”

Levi swallows hard, because the tenderness in the air between the man’s fingers and Levi’s skin is unbearable.

“You’re always,” the man drops his hand and leans forward, so close, close enough this time that Levi can feel breath against his own lips, “captivating.”

Levi can’t pull away. He wants to, needs to, feels a darkness ebbing at the shimmery day that has become unreal. He doesn’t know what year it is ( _1943, it’s 1943,_ he tells himself); doesn’t know where he is ( _Flatbush, Brooklyn, where your mother, Kuchel, lives,_ he tells himself); doesn’t know what he’s wearing ( _the shirt you pressed and starched with your own hands,_ he tells himself).

And when the touch is finally there against his face, it’s reverent and final, the way he’s seen mourners lay flowers on gravestones.

“Do you know who I am?”

Levi finally looks at him, looks into his eyes, and he knows.

“You take people.”

There’s a small smile, something dark there, his teeth too white and sharp.

“You kill people,” Levi adds.

“In a manner of speaking,” the man replies reasonably, dropping his hand. “ _You_ kill people.”

Levi drops his eyes, taking a step back. The world seems to set itself down again, and he’s there in 1943, in his starched Sunday suit near his mother’s apartment, looking at the silent, handsome monument of a man who no one else seems to see each morning.

“I don’t do that anymore,” he murmurs, clenching his scarred fingers into fists, feeling the throb of the metal pin in his ankle. “What’s your name?” he demands, scowling.

The man looks thoughtful for a few moments, as if he doesn’t actually have an immediate answer. After a few seconds pass, though, he speaks. “Erwin.” He smiles faintly. “That’s my favorite.”

“Your favorite _what_?” Levi demands, something cold prickling up his spine.

When there’s no response, he tries again, testing the new name in his mouth. “ _Erwin_ , I said—”

It is not 1943.

There is no suit.

There is no church.

“Erwin.” Levi’s voice is suddenly weak, desperate, calling.

Erwin is walking inside now, back up the stairs and disappearing from sight.

“Why do you always leave me?” Levi’s voice is choked—lost in the sounds of gunfire and horses’ hooves and monsters that cross eras and memory and different planes of hell—words trying to follow a receding shimmer.

“I don’t.” Erwin stops on the stairwell, his back to Levi. “You’re just too kind to ever make me stay.”

Levi hears a fly buzz—summer insects, maybe—but then he smells flowers and hears more flies and there is an immense wave of tears and blood lapping at the edges of his senses.

“Stay, then,” he demands.

There’s a wry chuckle, more of a hum, as if Erwin is listening to a thought-provoking fairy story.

“I’ll break your legs,” Levi threatens, real tears in his voice now. He hasn’t cried since Kenny’s funeral, and he doesn’t know why he is now. “Not too badly,” he whispers, “just enough so you can’t go, but that you’ll be able to put them back together again.”

Erwin turns slightly, looking over his shoulder, still not meeting Levi’s eyes.

Somehow, Levi knows the world will melt away again if he loses himself in that deep, deep timeless blue; flowers will suffocate him and the flies with devour him.

“You’ve fought well,” Erwin replies, taking a few more steps away, his voice more like a dream than an audible sound. “You’ve done so well, Levi. You always do.”

“You stood there on the steps,” Levi says, his voice quiet and accusatory, “and waited for me to notice.”

Erwin stops, broad shoulders stiff, strangely fragile.

“I did,” he affirms.

“You watched me pass every morning and didn’t say anything.”

There’s a short silence. “I did,” he confirms again after a moment.

“Why?” Levi tries for a logical answer, waiting, as if there’s a good explanation of why death would visit Brooklyn in 1943 as he walked his mother to church.

Erwin is silent.

“My mother.” Levi doesn’t even need to say it aloud. Her cough has become worse lately.

“I’m sorry,” Erwin says softly.

“No, you’re not.” Levi’s voice is devoid of judgment or anger. 

“No, I’m not,” Erwin agrees, his voice thoughtful, inhuman; but Levi is drawn to it more with each passing moment, longing for it. “But,” he amends, “seeing you suffer is…” His voice catches as he shakes his head, letting it hang. 

In his peripheral vision, which Levi is careful not to follow, he knows there are bodies, flies, carnage which have taken the place of the apartment building’s lobby.

“Don’t look,” Erwin says, his tone caught between a command and a plea. “Please.”

“I know what you are,” Levi replies, walking forward to stand behind Erwin now. Outside, the light is so bright that it hurts to even glance at it. In the center is Erwin, to one side, a killing field full of corpses; the other, a painfully bright place in which to be forgotten and consumed.

So he presses his cheek against Erwin’s back—this body he remembers the shape of without ever touching it—and closes his eyes. Erwin smells the same, something familiar, not taken from any memory.

“I’ve seen all the people you’ve taken,” Levi murmurs, inhaling deeply and pressing his nose against Erwin’s back through the fine fabric. “How long did you stand there?” He curls his hand around Erwin’s hip. “How long did you wait for me?”

“A long time,” is the soft response. “I shouldn’t.”

“But you do.” Levi exhales, pulling Erwin closer, both arms wrapped around his waist now. “You wait, every time.” He presses a soft kiss against his spine, and Erwin sighs.

“There’s no hell,” Erwin says. “Did you know that?” Levi feels a sudden grip on his hand—a presence more than a physical touch, a sensation so terrifying he can feel it rattle down his spine and center like ice in his heart—but he simply grips back. Erwin gives the answer before Levi can reply. “Only loneliness.”

“I know.”

The words are simple; Erwin’s breath hitches, pain evident in the well of his throat.

“Do you want me to stay?” Levi isn’t sure he’s ever asked—isn’t actually sure _what_ he’s asked before, or how many times—but Erwin answers readily.

“No.”

“You’re lying.”

Erwin stays very still, his voice calm. “I am.”

“Why?” Levi asks into the back of Erwin’s suit jacket, his eyes closed, desperate to hold on.

“Because I need to go.”

“No,” Levi says softly, and tugs at Erwin to turn him around. “Not this time.”

Erwin turns, but he won’t meet Levi’s eyes.

Levi reaches up to run his fingers through the neat blond hair, soft, and again, familiar, yet it’s never touched his fingertips. It makes him want to weep—the immense longing there, a terrible ache that extends years behind and ahead of him.

He tilts Erwin’s chin up, and their eyes finally meet.

A few tears slip down Levi’s face as he stares into his own mortality, possibly the human body’s response to terror—sinking into a bottomless well of blue that gnaws and consumes him, grinds his bones to dust and crushes the breath from his body.

There is no shimmer now, no year, no suit. Levi is alone. He’s not sure of his own name, if he has one or ever had one at all.

“I wasn’t kind this time,” he says into a deep darkness, the lonely abyss. “I kept you. Is this my punishment?”

“No.” Erwin is behind him, maybe in a body, maybe a simple darkness, maybe a pile of corpses, a mountain of flowers.

But there’s an embrace around what’s left of Levi, and he thinks he sighs.

*

There’s a myth about when Death took a holiday.

In the story, sometimes, Death falls in love and abandons his duties, and the earth succumbs to destruction. 

In others, he falls in love but must leave, and spends eternity heartbroken.

But then there’s a version people tell after 1943—the version told by those who have died but are resuscitated, those who have seen the great beyond. 

They say that death is not just a lonely specter, that death has gained a shadow.

They say that death is an immense blue lake, and beneath its shining surface, a dark-haired man with gray eyes swims through its depths, casting shapes on the bottom. 

And he kisses the waves, smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> If you read this far, you got some nerve, kid.
> 
> I have at [tumblr](http://flecksofpoppy.tumblr.com/). c:


End file.
